Smashing the Piano

$10.95 – $19.95

After the necessary pause for reassessment that followed his Collected Poems (1995), Montague enters a new mode in the lyrical poems of Smashing the Piano.

Praise for Smashing the Piano 

“John Montague has spent a lifetime confronting his own vulnerability, and in doing so, has broadened and strengthened modern Irish poetry. . . . As always, Montague sees clearly what has been lost, but also what has been retained and refined over a lifetime. What’s remarkable is the new energy which informs and transforms these well-crafted excursions into lost time. As such, this book is more a rejuvenation than a sequel, a revitalizing of a painful past into a permanent and healing present. Smashing the Piano is Montague at the top of his game.”
– Kevin Murphy, Irish Literary Supplement

“Montague’s lyrical descriptive powers have never been stronger, and line after line stays in the reader’s head. Smashing the Piano could be called an Indian summer, if that phrase did not imply a preceding autumn; Montague has never been better or more verbally alert.”
– Bernard O’Donoghue, The Irish Times